The Great Lakes are 5 territories with 5 borders. Ontario is 9 territories with 5 borders. Same borders, it's just more territories.

But each state has some territories that do not have borders and the Great Lakes have a border on each of its territories. I would think that this would be much harder to hold then any of the others. The whole map is about the Great Lakes, it should be the center of the game.

I would:
Get rid of the 'gobe grid'
Make all the army shadows the same, right now some are red and some are white.
Have the mountains go off the map, I'm thinking around pittsburg and harrisburg the mountains should continue south.
Michigan should be reduced to 4.
Illinois should be 2
Great lakes should be 4, 5 at the most
Some words have wobly letters.

The new map looks great too. Although I am being picky, the area above Thunder Bay should not be named "Frances" (I think you meant Fort Frances anyway), but Fort Frances is on the American border with Minnesota at International Falls. If you want to be accurate, go with Dryden, Kenora or Greenstone.
Looks great though.

not to spam, but happy to see you representing! Scranton! Yay! i love the office! ok, but the map looks good. i like the idea of the ports attacking, but perhaps you should be more specific about how they can attack...ie, just the lakes or not. Also, i think the grid should go. Great map so far, should just need some tweaking before its in.

maybe the lakes could become more powerful by letting them attack any territory they border, rather than just the ports... I mean, if you had some warships in those lakes, you wouldn't only bombard the ports, would you? Though you probably would have to go via a port to launch your own ships against forces holding a lake...
PS it looks beautiful, love the perspective!

UPDATE NUMBER 3Sorry for the long wait. I have had lots of stuff going on in reality. Here is the next update. I still need to add text to describe the port territories bu the icons of an anchor better distinguish them now. Plus here is what they look like with armies.

The bonus layout is different too. I was thinking of putting the names of the states inside each area. (like the revamp of the middle east map)

Plus what does everyone think about the rivers. Several people have expressed dislike in the fact that I have made rivers bigger than they are in real life. I did this to break up the map. Sort of like the USA map. Idaho cannot attack Oregon on that map but hey can in real life. I was attempting to use real attributes of the region to help with borders and layout. What do you think about the rivers?

Oh. The text for the ports will read something like this. Lakes can attack adjacent lakes and adjacent port territories. Port territories can attack adjacent lakes and territories.

Any help here would be appreciated.

Last edited by WidowMakers on Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I didn't notice this on the previous image, but your territory names are a little wonky... if you get my meaning. Some letters are higer/lower than others next to them.

I'm not sure I like the new legend. I think the original was fine, it just needed some tweaking. I'm not sold on the colouring and texturing of the lakes either. How they were was ok and I think the texture was less noticeable then.

I think the rivers are ok, if a little uneccessary. Maybe try it without them and see how it looks. I'd like to see some different bridges, the one's you have do the job, I just feel you could come up with something better.

KEYOGI wrote:I didn't notice this on the previous image, but your territory names are a little wonky... if you get my meaning. Some letters are higer/lower than others next to them.

They are all still vector based. SInce I made them small Photoshop for some reason is messing them up. I guess rotating a small font 2 degrees makes it weird. Once the names settle down I will rasterize the layers and fix the text issue.

KEYOGI wrote:I'm not sure I like the new legend. I think the original was fine, it just needed some tweaking. I'm not sold on the colouring and texturing of the lakes either. How they were was ok and I think the texture was less noticeable then.

I like the old legend too but people were saying it was too hard to read. I will make this my next poll question.

I made the lakes different textures so people not from the the USA would be able to tell where they border.

KEYOGI wrote:I think the rivers are ok, if a little uneccessary. Maybe try it without them and see how it looks. I'd like to see some different bridges, the one's you have do the job, I just feel you could come up with something better.

I can eliminate the rivers and see what people think. My concern is that it opens the map up a lot and makes a lot more borders.

I like the new key- its simple and direct. A schematic representation instead of a list of names, which can be helpful because you can notice strong and weak areas of the map quite easily. I think its an effective simplification.

I don't like the new lakes very much though. Can't you tell that each lake divides at the narrow parts where there is a bridge crossing? That all seems pretty clear to me, but then again I'm American and I've seen the lakes many times.

As for the ports- your intention is for them to only be able to attack lakes they border correct? So Detroit could only attack Lake Erie (which I guess is why you extended the dark blue above the detroit-windsor bridge). I think a better solution would be to move that bridge so it connects Saginaw and Windsor. That way the bridge crosses exactly at the lake borders as is the case with every other bridge.

Indiana and Illinois are a bit hard to distinguish. Those continents are almost entirely bordered by the river so their outline coloring doesn't stand out very well. Also perhaps its because of the color choices (Brown looks a bit like shadow, and the blue blends with the river). I would either make the color outline for each of those continents a little thicker, or replace them with brighter, more distinct colors. In fact, whenever a river corresponds to a continent border the river reduces the apparent size of the colored band (I'm guessing the river is placed over the real border). So maybe the solution would be to have the coloring start at the river edges instead of the centerline where the border currently is.

WidowMakers wrote:They are all still vector based. SInce I made them small Photoshop for some reason is messing them up. I guess rotating a small font 2 degrees makes it weird. Once the names settle down I will rasterize the layers and fix the text issue.

A bit off topic but how did you get the names to rotate while still being vector based in photoshop? I have always had to rasterise them before rotating/skewing/bending/modifying them. the only think I can change when they are vector baed in the font, pt size, justification and direction(left right, up down) honestly doing anything vector based in photoshop has been a pain for me(I hate that pen tool).